A castle of dreams

Ta-Da! A castle to be proud of!

Who could imagine that the lowly tissue box could be so wonderfully transformed into a beautiful castle? The kids enjoyed every moment of this project as they painted one day and decorated the next. Adding a portcullis, drawbridge, battlements, moats, and towers brought the castles to life. It was loads of fun and tied in nicely to our fairy tale genre.

Our completed castles

  

All the finishing touches!

Now to get it home on the bus....

Painting was the first step

Pass the gray please...

Camouflage that tissue box!

The painting day was carefully organized with explicit directions not to walk around with the paint loaded paint brushes! I apologize if anyone got paint on their clothes - we were very careful, and I think it is washable paint, but I did spy one white shirt that attracted a fair amount of paint...

The following day we added the paper decorations and details to our castles:

Last steps

How do you like it so far?!

Fairy tale texts we read this week included King Midas and the Golden Touch, and Sleeping Beauty. We also read The Ugly Duckling, and The True Story of the Three Little Pigs (as told from the point of view of the wolf).


Our fairy tale riders for mystery letters finished up our letter collection this week. 

Dodging dragon danger!

No ogre will stop us!

Several friends took their time practicing and performing a conversational play between fairy tale characters. All that extra practice makes for some great reading expression!

We can guess the fairy tale author!

Ready to present!

You'll love our story!

We are excited to perform!

 On Thursday it was a National Day for Outdoor Classrooms, so we headed out for a couple of activities ourselves. One was a snack time while listening to a read aloud. The other was making a map of our playground. Everyone found a spot to make their map from and took it very seriously!

Future architects!

A shady place for drawing maps

A cozy nook for drawing

Full concentration!

Getting it just right!

Drawing in the details

Drawing buddies!

A bench is a good spot too

You will love this map!

Let's not forget outdoor snack and story!

Learning about Day & Night in science gave us the opportunity to use a flashlight for the sun, a globe, and a 'spinner' to observe how the earth's rotation follows the pattern of night and day when it faces the sun or faces away from the sun.

I'll be the sun, you rotate the earth!

I'll be the earth spinner!

Our Jack and the Beanstalk plants have started growing as you can see. Hopefully they will all take off soon.

Almost through the castle

In writing we continue to compose poems. This week we tried our hands at rhyming poetry - a bit of a challenge, but once started, everyone came up with some nice rhythm and rhyme poems.

I'm a poet, and I know it!

Let's help each other rhyme

 This week we had to rearrange our schedule for 3 days to accommodate the older grades with MCAS testing. There were a few long afternoons, and by Friday afternoon we were more than ready to rest and take in a short fairy tale movie!

Taking a break

Have a wonderful weekend,
Mrs. Dagley